Planned destruction of Warsaw

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The city of Warsaw was nearly destroyed in a planned way by Nazi Germany after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.

[edit] Expulsion of civilians

In 1944 a large transit camp (Durchgangslager) was constructed in Pruszków, in the Train Repair Shops (Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego), to house the evacuees expelled from Warsaw by the Nazis. In the course of the Warsaw Uprising and its suppression, the Germans deported approximately 550,000 of the city’s residents and approximately 100,000 civilians from its outskirts, sending them to this Durchgangslager 121 (Dulag 121), a transit camp. The security police and the SS segregated the deportees and decided their fate. Approximately 650,000 people passed through the Pruszków camp in August, September, and October. Approximately 55,000 were sent to concentration camps, including 13,000 to Auschwitz. They included people from a variety of social classes and occupations (government officials, scholars, artists, physicians, merchants, and blue-collar workers), in varying physical condition (the injured, the sick, invalids, and pregnant women), and of various ages, from infants only a few weeks old to the elderly, aged 86 or more. In a few cases, these were also people of different ethnic backgrounds, including Jews living on “Aryan papers.” ^[3]

Some people hid in the deserted city. They were called Robinsons (after Robinson Crusoe) or cavemen. Germans called them rats and killed them if they were found within the city ruins. The best known Robinson of Warsaw was Władysław Szpilman (The Pianist). Chaim Itsl Goldstein has also published his memoirs The Bunker.

[edit] Looting and destruction of buildings

After the remaining population had been expelled, the Germans started the destruction of the remains of the city.^[4] Special groups of German engineers were dispatched throughout the city in order to burn and demolish the remaining buildings. According to German plans, after the war Warsaw was to be turned into nothing more but a military transit station,^[1] or even a lake.^[5] The demolition squads used flame-throwers and explosives to methodically destroy house after house. They paid special attention to historical monuments, Polish national archives and places of interest: nothing was to be left of what used to be a city.^[2]

Bank Polski in 2004, bearing the scars of the Uprising. The lighter-colored bricks were added during the building's reconstruction after 2003.

By January 1945 85 % of the buildings were destroyed: 10 % as a result of September 1939 campaign and other combat, 15 % as a result of the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 25 % as a result of the Uprising, and 35 % as a result of systematic German actions after the uprising.^[4]

Material losses were estimated at 10,455 buildings, 923 historical buildings (94 percent), 25 churches, 14 libraries including the National Library, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, University of Warsaw and Warsaw University of Technology, and most of the historical monuments.^[4] Almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions.^[4] The exact amount of losses of private and public property as well as pieces of art, monuments of science and culture is unknown but considered enormous. Studies done in the late 1940s estimated total damage at about $30 billion US dollars.^[6] In 2004 President of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński, now President of Poland, established a historical commission to estimate material losses that were inflicted upon the city by German authorities. The commission estimated the losses on at least 31.5 billion US dollars in 2004 value.^[7] Those estimates where later raised to 45 billion 2004 US dollars and in 2005, to 54,6 billions.^[8]

Destruction was so bad that in order to rebuild much of Warsaw, a detailed landscape of the city which had been commissioned by the government before the Partitions of Poland (18th century), painted by two Italian artists Bacciarelli and Canaletto who ran an arts school there as well, had to be used as a model to recreate most of the buildings.

Notable dates in the history of destruction of Warsaw:

• September, 4, Royal Castle
• October, Collection of manuscripts from the National Library of Poland burned
• December, 18, Brühl Palace
• December, 27, Saxon Palace
• December, Łazienki Palace burned, about 1 000 holes drilled in its walls, the construction however preserved

Alfred Mensebach and a number of camera teams documented the destruction.

The city of Warsaw was rebuilt, with the Old Town being partially restored to its former state.

[edit] Notable damaged or destroyed structures

• Warsaw Old Town
• Royal Castle
• Copper-Roof Palace
• Saxon Palace
• Piłsudski Square
• Krasiński Palace
• Brühl Palace
• Kotowski Palace
• Ostrogski Palace
• Sapieha Palace
• Palace under the Four Winds
• Potocki Palace
• Mostowski Palace
• Staszic Palace
• Tyszkiewicz Palace
• Kazimierzowski Palace
• Ujazdów Castle
• Zygmunt's Column
• St. John's Cathedral
• Jesuit Church
• St. Anne's Church
• Carmelite Church
• St. Mary's Church
• Holy Cross Church
• St. Casimir's Church
• St. Jacek's Church
• St. Martin's Church
• Holy Trinity Church
• Field Cathedral of the Polish Army
• Załuski Library

[edit] References